December 09, 2009

~*Crushed*Glass*~ - Chris vs Twilight, Chapters 1 through ...
Chris Sims, the internet superstar and dirtbike champion, has always made it a point of reading things so you don't have to. First it was the breast-centric "Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose" which is one of the worst comic series ever written, and once featured a recipient of a cursed organ donation who ended up with a haunted vagina.
Next Chris tackled the comic adaptation of a Laurel K Hamilton comic series based upon her popular (though I don't understand why) Anita Blake series, in which Anita Blake is drawn terribly and stands around a lot.
Continuing in his public artistic masochism, Chris has begun liveblogging his read of the execrable "Twilight" series. Or at least the first book. Though I honestly doubt he'll be able to finish it. He's doing this on Twitter with the #ChrisvsTwilight hashtag, but it is still a bit cumbersome to read. Fortunately, someone has taken the trouble to catalog his comments on LiveJournal.
Here is a sample. Though I really recommend following Sims on Twitter.

Here we go. Chris vs. Twilight, Chapter 1. In order to steel myself, I've put on the Pixies as background music.
Before we hit the first chapter--Jeez, there's a preface, too--there's a quote from Genesis.
Had I written this, there Genesis quote would be "I can feel it coming in the air tonight. Oh lord."
So far so good. Preface is pretty interesting, stilted sentences aside. Girl's gonna die or something. Cool.
Chapter 1 opens with girl describing her clothes. THE BIG SLEEP opens with Marlowe describing his socks. COINCIDENCE? (yes)
P.4: "I loved the vigorous, sprawling city." FRANK MILLER'S TWILIGHT.
I gotta say, five pages in and I don't really care for Bella. She's melodramatic and pretty self-important so far.
. . .

The comic opens with the Green Goblin angry that Namor has quit the Masters of Evil, and has instead joined the X-Men. As retaliation, the Green Goblin has decided to weaponize the horniness of Namor's ex-wife.
Here is the dialogue explaining his weaponize-the-horniness plan: "She's part human and part Plodex-- the Plodex are some kind of alien race apparently-- and when you mix'em up you get this. We've modified her to keep her perpetually in estrus which explains her rotten attitude... but the result is a genetic W.M.D."
Estrus is defined as follows: "A regularly recurrent state of sexual excitability during which the female of most mammals will accept the male and is capable of conceiving."
The monster is a canal with teeth, plainly invoking the classic image of the "vagina dentata"-- the vagina with teeth. Wikipedia: "Various cultures have folk tales about women with toothed vaginas, frequently told as cautionary tales warning of the dangers of sex with strange women and to discourage the act of rape. The concept is also of importance in classical psychoanalysis, where it is held to relate to the unconscious fears associated with castration anxiety."
In the monster genre, the origin of the monster frequently contains a warning to the reader. The Frankenstein Monster is a folly of science. Godzilla is awoken by the atom bomb. The Host is created by pollution the United States forces Korea to inflict upon itself. The origin of a monster is the part that speaks to the audience's true fears.
The origin of our vagina monster? It's a woman wanting sex. Sex makes women crazy and dangerous. The result of female sexual excitability is a "genetic W.M.D."
. . .